


Regroup

by Agf



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, But also ignoring feelings, Gen, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Spoilers, Team Dynamics, because Avengers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2019-05-04 10:30:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14591085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Agf/pseuds/Agf
Summary: Spoilers for Infinity War!After, when the shock has transformed from paralysing to something only numbing, Steve commandeers a jet and takes what’s left of the Avengers back to New York.Immediately post the events of Infinity War, there are two important questions: 'Who's left?' and 'What now?'





	Regroup

After, when the shock has transformed from paralysing to something only numbing, Steve commandeers a jet and takes what’s left of the Avengers back to New York. He leaves Vision’s broken body, all wiring and torn metal, with Shuri, T’Challa’s sister. She is quiet and still smeared with dirt and oil, but now that her brother is gone she holds herself with the same steadfast grace, and she agrees to try and help.  
  
Rocket comes with them, sticking close to Thor’s side. He has spent days mumbling under his breath, shouting out at night, but none of them can offer any comfort. After all, they have all been broken at the loss of some of their family, Rocket has lost them all.  
  
Steve does not allow himself to dwell on the names of those they lost. Not even the one who is still calling his own name every time he lets himself fall into silence. _Steve?_ He fires up the jet and nods when Natasha slips into the co-pilot position, and they silently chart a course home. Thor, Rocket, Banner and Rhodey take turns napping in the back. Natasha takes over once New York comes into view beneath them. There’s evidence of destruction here – nothing like after the Chituari invasion, but… Plumes of smoke rise from the roads, burning-out cars lay piled up on top of one another. There’s a downed airplane beside some tower blocks. The streets look empty.  
  
The old Avengers tower, with it's landing pad, however, is still standing.  
  
“What happened here?” Thor asks, appearing at the back of the cockpit. He places a hand on Steve’s shoulder.  
  
“Thanos’ click,” Natasha answers, “anyone who was behind a wheel…”  
  
Thor nods. “I understand.”  
  
"I can land us here,” Natasha says. She is all business, and Steve appreciates it beyond measure. He sits up a little straighter in his chair.  
  
“Hold tight everyone. Thor, make sure Rocket is stable.” The raccoon is asleep again, mumbling to himself, and Thor goes to wake him. Banner and Rhodey just look exhausted, barely registering when they land the jet with a bump.  
  
The tower’s empty of all the old Avengers stuff, but there’s a man waiting for them. Happy Hogan nods when they exit the jet, but something in his smile dims when Bruce is the last out. He looks over them, and counts them. “FRIDAY,” he says, holding out a small scanner. “Remote access. We uninstalled everything when we left, but you can still speak to her here.”  
  
“Thank you,” Steve replies. He squares his shoulders and takes the machine. “You got anything else we can use? Phones, computers?” He turns back to his team. “If we assume that what we’ve heard is true, that Thanos has taken half of us, there’s still a chance we have some allies out there. Let’s get looking, and then we can plan.”  
  
Natasha smiles at him, and Steve knows that she’s approving of this tactic. Moping, no matter how much they all want to give over to it – no matter that it’s not moping but grief, raw and painful – it won’t help them. It never was the answer.  
  
“I’ll try and contact Hawkeye,” Natasha offers. “Rhodey, some of SHIELD must still be operational. Can you try and use your army leverage, see if you can get us some status reports?”  
  
“I’m on it.”  
  
“Thor, take Rocket. See if there’s some tech you can use to try and locate anyone who might be off-planet. Bruce, you said there was some kind of temple…”  
  
“A Sanctum, yeah.”  
  
“Find it, see if Strange left us anyone helpful.”  
  
“I’m going to look for Ant-Man,” Steve says, “and Tony.” FRIDAY’s display is a map showing the last known location of the Iron Man armour, and Steve suspects that it being registered at the very edge of the atmosphere does not mean anything good. Still, if anyone were to survive that, Stark might. After all, he had the experience.  
  
There’s another, smaller blot registered at the very same spot, and Steve pulls up the info for an Iron-Spider suit. He can remember the kid’s voice. _Queens_.  
  
“Meet back here in two hours. Use the comms if you find anything,” Steve says, and then they disperse.  
  
***  
  
The comm units are beaten up and heavy with static, but they can still hear Bruce’s voice. “I found a guy, Wong. He helped out when Thanos’ team first landed. Says he saw Tony and Spider-Man pursue the ship as it took Strange—” The line goes dead for a few minutes, and then Bruce’s voice comes back. “He says Strange would never just give up the time stone, he swore an oath to protect it.”  
  
All of them can remember the glowing green in Thanos’ gauntlet, the way he’d undone all of Wanda’s sacrifice. “Thanks Bruce. See if you can find some supplies, bring him here if- if he wants.”  
  
“Alright Cap.”  
  
Steve’s attempts at contacting either suit through the FRIDAY unit Happy gave him have all failed. If they were with Strange when the time stone was taken…  
  
Steve pulls up the file on Scott Lang.  
  
***  
  
“Black Widow reporting. Copy?”  
  
“Rogers, I copy.”  
  
“No answer at Hawkeye’s safe house. No response on any pre-arranged private channels. I can’t get hold of him.”  
  
“Okay Nat. Thank you.”  
  
“Widow out.”  
  
***  
  
The lines go silent for another hour, and it’s Rhodey’s voice that comes through next. “Captain, I got a report here on the status of SHIELD. Extreme losses sustained, about two thirds of the agents are accounted for. I repeat, two thirds of agents are responding to distress calls.”  
  
“Good work Rhodey.”  
  
“Command has been passed to an Agent Reeves.”  
  
Natasha buzzes in. “I know Reeves. He’ll be helpful. Is Fury…?”  
  
“Non-responsive. His vehicle was located crashed and empty on sixth street. Hill is also presumed gone.”  
  
Steve sighs, and drags a hand over his face. In the privacy of the empty tower, he allows himself a small moment to feel overwhelmed, before he steps in. “Thank you Rhodey.”  
  
“There’s something else Cap. Fury’s transmitter was discovered at the scene. It appears he was putting out a distress signal, but they’re tracing it here and it goes off-planet. Natasha?”  
  
A moment of silence. “Contacting Stark, maybe?”  
  
“I don’t think so. This is old tech, Tony would never have left them some emergency contact for him that was as outdated as this.”  
  
Steve hears the underlying message there too, that Tony wouldn’t have given Fury one, but not his best friend. “They’re tracking the signal?” he asks.  
  
“As much as they can. Science division is pretty depleted up here.”  
  
“I’ll send Bruce.” Steve says, and a few moments later there’s a new voice on the line.  
  
“Wong here. Bruce confirms.”  
  
***  
  
Thor and Rocket don’t manage to do much more than send out radio signals on a channel Rocket explains his team used. They don’t get any response.  
  
Steve gets through to the voicemail of Lang, and then the voicemail of Hank Pym. He doesn’t get a call back from either of them.  
  
They re-group, minus Rhodey and Bruce, at the empty tower. Natasha has clearly showered, but Steve knows better than to ask about where. There are secrets he has to let her keep, or he knows she’ll lose even the shaky footing she operates on.  
  
“If this SHIELD group has a way to contact people off-planet, why can’t I use it?” Rocket asks, for the eighth time.  
  
“Banner will find a way to replicate the machine, and we will be more successful in our attempts at locating our friends,” Thor says.  
  
“I mean, clearly whatever this Fury guy – and what kind of name is that, by the way? Clearly his plan, it's not working. No one’s answered, right? They might not even be there. He’s ringing an empty phone line, and he’s had his turn.”  
  
“Fury won’t have used his last moments on a chance,” Natasha interrupts. She’s leaning against the windows, looking down onto the street below. “Whoever he signalled, whatever that means, they’ll answer.”  
  
Rocket rolls his eyes and throws his hands up in the air. “But they might answer with a resounding _no_ , don’t you think? What, we’re gonna wait another few days, see if the ‘fuck you’ comes through loud and clear, and _then_ you’ll let me see if I can find my ship?”  
  
Steve can feel the tension crackling between them all, but he’s too exhausted to do anything about it. To his surprise, Thor chuckles. "If we receive that answer, we will allow you to respond to them in turn before you use the machine,” he says, and pats Rocket’s head.  
  
Somehow, it works.  
  
***  
  
“-opy? This is Agent five-three requesting immediate transit, do you copy? This is Agent five-three. SHIELD, do you copy?”  
  
Steve sits bolt upright in the dark, his heart hammering. The soft breaths of his remaining companions don’t alter, but as his eyes adjust, Steve picks out the noise that had woken him. Not a dream – his comm line lays abandoned on the floor beside the makeshift pillow, and he slips it back into his ear, and pads from the room.  
  
“- requesting immediate transit. Does anybody copy? Fuck- This is Agent five-three—”  
  
“Clint?”  
  
“requesting immediate- Rogers? That you?”  
  
Steve clasps his hand to his other ear to block out any noise – this signal is faint. He leans back against the wall. “It’s me. Clint, where are you?”  
  
“Fuck, God, is Nat with you?”  
  
“She’s here. Clint, where are you? Tell me where you are.”  
  
Clint reels off a string of coordinates, repeating them twice, before he says anything else. “I’ve been trying to get this radio to transmit for days. They left me in the lurch down here, I got called back once it started kicking off but there was no one to collect me.”  
  
“On a mission for SHIELD? I thought you retired?” Steve says. He has FRIDAY pulled up again, and he sends a message to Rhodey, the list of coordinates. “I’ve sent someone to come and get you.”  
  
“Oh thank God. Who’s with you? I was on a plane when…”  
  
“You hurt?”  
  
“Nothing too bad. Who’s there, Cap?”  
  
“Thor, Nat, Rhodey and Bruce. A raccoon called Rocket.”  
  
“Sorry?”  
  
“He talks. It’s a long story, he’s from space.”  
  
“Not touching that yet. The others?”  
  
“Gone, or missing. Stark’s last known location was the edge of the atmosphere, same with Strange and Spider-Man. Ant-Man is as missing as you were.”  
  
“Okay Cap. I think I see some lights – you really sent the big guns for me, huh? I’ll be with you soon.”  
  
“Alright. Hawkeye? It’s good to hear your voice. Glad you’re okay.”  
  
“You too, Cap. Hawkeye out.”  
  
***  
  
Natasha doesn’t cry when Rhodey arrives with Clint in tow, but she does grab his forearm in vice-like fingers and drags him from the room. Nobody follows, but Rocket raises his furry eyebrows and mutters something about the disappointing lack of furniture they’re about to discover.  
  
Wong and Bruce return, but only long enough to extend the offer of making the Sanctum their base. They move the same afternoon. Rhodey begins to bring over whatever tech SHIELD can spare, and they let Rocket loose on it.  
  
The Sanctum has enough rooms for them all, crammed impossibly into the small space, but Steve doesn’t ask questions. He and Wong spend most of their time in the library, trying to find something that could help them in all the ancient texts that line the walls. Steve doesn’t understand much of what he reads, but that’s nothing new. He’s good at adapting. Besides, he has a burning motivation that settles into his chest and helps to power him through, he barely needs sleep. _Steve?_  
  
They find information about the time stone. A list of capabilities so long it makes Steve feel sick. He learns it off by heart regardless.  
  
_Reverse time._  
  
They’ve seen that in action. It spelt the end for them. Steve pegs all his hopes on it offering them a new beginning.  
  
He begins to map out a plan. Natasha and Clint have taken over from Rhodey as the SHIELD liaisons, and they help. All they need is a way to find Thanos. Find him, and bring enough firepower to end him.  
  
Or, if not that, then just enough to separate him from his arm. A few seconds would do it.  
  
Wong teaches them all how to wield the gauntlet. It’s heavily theoretical, but they learn the best way to contain the energy, to channel it and, most importantly, how to activate the time stone. None of them would last long, but perhaps just long enough. Rocket is certain that if they were to work as a team, to share the energy between them, they would stand an even higher chance.  
  
“These plans we are making, they are very clever my friend,” Thor says to Steve one night, in the hallway outside of their rooms. “But they are only possibilities. We have no certainty, and we do not have the help we failed with before. Our task is a difficult one.”  
  
“99% impossible, Wong tells me,” Steve nods, but he smiles. “What, you getting too tired for all this?”  
  
“Ha! My friend, with you, I could do this all day.”  
  
***  
  
It’s a fortnight after they made it back to New York that a shout from Rocket raises them all in the night. “Signal!” he shouts, holding the FRIDAY device high above his head. “Fucking- Wake up, you bunch of thugs!”  
  
Steve’s mind is already planning their attack, how they deal with this if it’s a malevolent force, crowding forwards to see the mapped image. Hawkeye has his quiver slung over one shoulder between blinks.  
  
“It’s heading here,” Bruce notices, glancing up at the ceiling. “Do you have a landing pad?”  
  
“No,” Wong replies. “But we have a garden.”  
  
Thor doesn’t look surprised at all when the garden unfurls itself from the back of the building. He had mentioned visiting before, Steve remembers, maybe he already knew.  
  
“That’s my- It’s my ship!” Rocket says, blowing up the signal on the screen. “It’s… part of my ship. Hey, do you think…?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Steve replies. He wants to say ‘don’t get your hopes up’, but that’s too cruel. They watch from the windows, weapons in hand, as the ship lands gently in the garden. “If hostile, we follow formation three. Rhodey, you’re suit-less, if firing starts, follow Bruce.”  
  
The device in Rocket’s hand flickers to life, and an unfamiliar female voice says, “We’re here. Rocket’s inside. Are you sure they can hear us?”  
  
And then, like it makes the most sense in the world, Tony’s voice says, “Obviously I’m sure, I built the damn tech. FRIDAY, let them know I’m here.”  
  
The transmitter in Rocket’s hands beeps. ‘Mr Stark and Nebula are waiting in the garden,' FRIDAY says.  
  
They run outside.  
  
***  
  
Bruce scours the airwaves for hours at a time, Tony by his side. They construct an elaborate fortress of machinery in the attic of the Sanctum, collecting distress signals in handfuls every minute.  
  
When someone really needs help, they try and send a SHIELD envoy, or alert local authorities. It’s really the least they can do, but their main objective is not clean-up, it’s something more pressing.  
  
“If we assume Fury’s transmitter was one-way, we just have to rebound that same signal to open our own version up to a response,” Tony mutters to Bruce, elbow deep in wiring.  
  
“You’ll have to get it perfect, one infinitesimal fraction of a degree off and our signal is somewhere lost in deep space.”  
  
“Duh. I can do it.”  
  
“I know you can. Hand me that wrench.”  
  
Tony does without looking up. From the doorway, Steve watches the two scientists fiddle with levers and wires, soldering irons and antennae. It’s rustic, but it seems to be doing something. They have static for an hour or so, and they assure him that’s better than silence.  
  
Steve does what he can, and fetches them water. In the garden, Natasha and Nebula are sparring together, working out how they fit as a team. Hawkeye and Rocket are taking their turn trying to sleep. Wong will be in the library. Rhodey is at the nearby army base. His reunion with Tony had been emotional, but it seemed like seeing one another too often was only hurting them both now.  
  
Steve felt like he understood. When he’d found Peggy again, her face made him remember all the other faces that were gone. Nobody had mentioned Pepper at all, not even Happy. Steve could guess what that meant.  
  
His ears prick up at the sound of a new voice from the radio room. It’s not unusual, they’re still wading through cries for help, but this time it’s accompanied by Tony calling for him.  
  
“Rogers! We got it!”  
  
Steve abandons the glasses on the side and sprints for the room.  
  
“Hello? Fury?” It’s a female voice.  
  
Tony takes over the microphone. “This is Tony Stark. Director Fury is gone, and you were the last person he contacted.”  
  
“He sent me a partial distress signal. I was trying to locate him.”  
  
“Locate us instead. We’re who Fury left behind.”  
  
“Yes, Tony Stark, I have heard of you.”  
  
A sound behind him alerts Steve to the fact that the rest of the team has heard what’s happening, and they all crowd behind him in the doorway, listening in.  
  
“Listen, Fury contacted you because he thought you could help. We have a team here, we have an… approximation of a plan, we just need Thanos. I’m guessing that’s where you come in.”  
  
Silence on the line, apart from the soft sounds of breathing, and then the voice says. “Send me your coordinates. I can get you Thanos.”  
  
Tony claps his hands. “Then we’re in business. Thank you…?”  
  
“Carol.”  
  
“I’m sorry, Carol? Are you serious?” Tony turns to send a confused glance in Steve’s direction. Natasha and Clint look equally nonplussed by the name. “Our Thanos-hunter is named _Carol_? No offence, but it doesn't exactly strike fear…”  
  
“Tony,” Bruce hisses beside him, “unimportant.”  
  
Carol is laughing over the line though. “Okay, _Iron Man_. If it makes you feel better, you can call me Captain Marvel. Assemble your team.”

**Author's Note:**

> Let's all spend the next year writing fix-it fics and part 2s of our own where everyone is reunited and happy. Deal? Deal.


End file.
